Tonight, Adobe is releasing an open sourced, beta version of LiveCycle Data Services called BlazeDS. The open source nature of BlazeDS will make it a welcome addition to the developer’s arsenal. But on top of opening it up, Adobe is adding extra functionality called HTTP streaming that enables clients (i.e. applets in end-user browsers) to initiate persistent connections with servers that allow those servers to push data back to the client whenever the server deems a transfer necessary (e.g. to send the latest stock price). The hope is that this technology will make it possible for data to flow bothways (from server and back) much more efficiently. The most notable difference for website visitors should be faster performance, and hopefully better functionality as well.